At first, I was tempted to write a blog post about layoffs and the economy. But after thinking about the lived experience of the colleagues and friends I’ve made during my decade in Utah tech, I realized this isn’t another post about layoffs. It’s about asking the question “What happened to our Utah tech scene, and can we do anything meaningful about it?"

 Disclaimer:  I’ve only ever worked for Utah-based tech companies, and don’t have experience to draw on outside of our state.

If you think about the state of Silicon Slopes, we have a problem that’s obvious, and disheartening. Many of our largest "disruptive innovation companies" (unicorns) from the past decade have been sold and shuttered in record time, less than 15 years.
 

When I first got started as a web developer in 2014 you'd hear about a handful of hopeful unicorns that formed the larger Silicon Slopes movement. The biggest when I first broke into the industry was something like:
- Domo
- Qualtrics
- Pluralsight
- Workfront
- Divvy
- Instructure

There are many more that could be added to this list like; Podium, LucidChart, Homie, BambooHR, Ancestry, & MX (Side note: Bamboo, & MX specifically stand out as good faith actors from what I can tell). Instead, I'm going to focus on the companies below that went public or flirted with going public due to the size of their market cap and their dominance in the state.

Let's see what happened:
- Pluralsight: Went public in 2018, sold to Vista Equity Partners in Q1 of 2021.
- Qualtrics: actively courted an IPO in 2017 but instead sold and was rolled into SAP in 2018.
- Workfront: Acquired by Adobe in Q1 of 2021, which was universally regarded as the best possible outcome.
- Divvy: Sold to Bill.com in 2021, officially rebranded to Bill in 2023.
- Domo: Hastily went public one month after losing its billion-dollar market cap status, in an effort to raise funds and stop the bleeding. Now in 2023, 14% of the company was sold off by insiders. We still need to wait for the ending, but the signs don’t look great.
- Instructure: Went public earlier than most in 2015, but announced a private equity takeover by Thomas Bravo in 2019 right before the pandemic.

Spoiler alert... painful lessons. Instead of building a thriving tech community, what many tech workers have learned is that leadership is either looking to fund growth or trying to find an exit. These leaders will sail off into the sunset once they've found new management that can turn their hyper-growth SaaS machines into lean, efficient, profitable organizations.

This is a problem because engineers, product managers, and designers have to fight hard for life-changing amounts of equity (often with vesting schedules that are painfully slow). So these exits tend to concentrate wealth, not spread it.

The natural order of things is that the product workers who are a part of the exit might have enough equity to pay cash for a new Hyundai Sonata (but will eventually get canned due to those pesky salaries). And hey, is that a nice windfall? Sure. But feels meaningless when the CEO gets the Utah Jazz. And if you stick around after the company has exited, don’t expect things to get much better. In the case of Pluralsight’s CEO, it’s perfectly acceptable to take a multi-million dollar year-end bonus weeks after a 20% layoff, with a straight face, and no remorse.

We're quick to hire, quick to fire. And we’ll eventually be quick to hire again.

While I know this is a problem with the entire global tech industry, in Utah the problem is concentrated, as it affected way too many of our largest employers, (our "shiny beacon on the hill" to use some words that were thrown around when a certain large campus project was kicked off in Draper).

So why the sour face and bad attitude? I care deeply about Utah's tech scene. I care deeply for the talented engineers, PMs, & designers that have been laid off after pouring their genius into these incredible products... just to get canned while the products they made with blood sweat, and tears are still being loved by users all around the world. I've met some of the most brilliant, talented, and capable people right here in my backyard. Just about everyone that I’ve ever worked with has suffered a layoff in the last year. But what I find more interesting is that many of the people I know who were laid off intentionally chose to seek new employment outside of the state. They have their eyes set on companies on the coasts, not Utah companies. Who would blame them? Not me. 

If top talent in Utah feels like they need to look outside the state at remote jobs or relocate to get what they are looking for, we can watch a steady attrition of talent over the next decade as people physically or remotely flee back to the coasts or to the next boomtown. Top talent will be working to make tech scenes outside of Utah stronger, while ours continues to decay.

Rather than just sitting here and complaining about it, here are a few things that I feel would make a meaningful difference:

1. Stronger, Accountable Leadership: What we really need now more than ever are leaders who can see the forest through the trees and ditch short-term thinking and perpetual growth. These leaders need to have an intimate understanding of workers’ livelihood, not just about shareholder value, or making their VC partners happy.

2. Less reliance on venture capital: Can we leave hyper-growth behind us, and start companies differently than we're used to? In ways that revolve less around debt & leverage. Could we hire slowly and more deliberately, and grow slowly and steadily? Create companies that are resilient against economic winds?

3. Equity & Profit Sharing: Could we give out equity packages that are transparent and truly meaningful? So that if an exit comes around, the product builders can settle down in a house on the hills, send their kid to college, or fund their next crazy idea?

When Silicon Slopes is at its best it’s a thriving ecosystem of technology startups looking to make an impact. The skeleton in the closet was that most ran with no sense of urgency and without any efficiency whatsoever.

Utah still has the talent. Something needs to change. We need a mission, purpose, and community. Not another CEO turned NBA franchise owner. 

Hopefully, we can find a way to harness the creative, brilliant minds we have in this beautiful mountain valley, or eventually, they will leave.